Over the years Mr. Ed had become blind-sighted by the cold methodology that he utilized in getting what he wanted. It was at that level that Mr. Ed had always been at his best and maybe because of that he had managed to get away with a lot of things. Manipulating people here and there was simply to make sure that there wasn’t any competition to speak of. If the manipulation didn’t work, or when it took too long, there was always intimidation and violence.
The strategy worked: over the last decade Mr. Ed’s frozen pizza had positioned itself as one of the best frozen pizza’s out there ‘when too busy to cook, but still wanting a decent meal’. Mr Ed’s pizza was good, but it wasn’t exceptional, since any person with a two bit oven can bake a pizza, but what set Mr. Ed’s apart was that he was on top of the food chain.
Mr. Ed’sexile in Martossa was an attemptto reconcile with a more peaceful past, but instead it had awoken old memories and old urges. The only thing that kept him in check was the fact that Martossa was a small town where he might get caught more easily.
1
Mr. Ed was early in the VR, which gave him some time to look around. He had selected the location based on the description ‘Luxury log estate’. First he walked over to the window, like Phyllis had done. Outside there was a forest and mountains in the distance. It all seemed very real. He went out of the study and into the large living room, through the back door and into the yard. He then realized that the VR had one very big flaw: it didn’t have the sense of smell. The house smelled just like his hotel room, as well as the forest. Other than that it was as real as ever: the sounds, there were birds in the distance and there was a definite cold draft.
Mr. Ed walked around the house and unlike what he had expected it wasn’t at the end of some dirt road, but it was at the end of a paved road and the neighbors house was within sight.
“Are you Mr. Ed?” he hears a girl’s voice coming from behind of him.
Mr. Ed turns around and sees her coming down the stairs and joins him on the driveway.
“I am,” Mr. Ed says, “I was early and went out to explore the place.”
“Quite real, huh?”
“It is,” Mr. Ed says, “I can only think of one thing that’s missing.”
“The sense of smell.”
“How did you know?”
“It’s a well known flaw of VR,” Michelle says, “It’s hard to mix smells like pixels orink. It just doesn’t work like that.”
“How does it work?”
“I couldn’t tell you,” Michelle says, “If you asked me what VR means in our current cultural context, then I could be of help.”
Mr. Ed sizes her up.
“I’m a student of anthropology.”
She has a small wiry stature and Mr. Ed wouldn’t have expected her to study something like that: anthropology is all about what happens below the surface. At heart this takes a certain kind of cunning and an instinctive insight into the vices of human nature. The girl just doesn’t seem to be the type.
“Shall we go inside?” Mr. Ed says.
*
Mr. Ed leans back and studies Michelle. There’s something about this girl that he didn’t see at first. She triggered something on an instinctive level, but he just couldn’t put his finger on it why.
“What can I do for you?”
“Well,” Michelle says, “Maybe this is odd to begin with, but I have always found it difficult to just open up like that.”
“It’s nod odd,” Mr. Ed says, “Not odd at all.”
“Good.”
“You’re a private person?”
“Kind of,” Michelle says, “I usually prefer to be by myself.”
Mr. Ed thinks: there’s more below the surface.
“What’s new in anthropology?”
“Not so much, to be honest,” Michelle says, “Most cultures are organized around the same social structures that have been in use for hundreds ormaybe thousands of years. They are all based on some of our basic psychological needs: safety, love, food. When it comes to our psychological needs in relation to social structures, then it has to do with our willingness to obey to higher powers, to authorities and for our lives to be – at least in the social aspect – to be kind of predictable.”
“Then what’s so interesting about all that?” Mr. Ed asks, “If nothing has changed?”
Michelle thinks about that one for a moment.
“Our times are stranger than they ever were,” Michelle says, then she’s looking for the right words, “We have build these highly advanced societies, but there’s still a lot of bad going on around us that we can’t seem to control.”
“Poverty and sickness?”
“Those are two,” Michelle says, “The extent to which we see that around us is inherent to the way in which a society and a culture is organized.”
“Then where democracy fails might be more interesting….” Mr. Ed says, “Like populism and how that can slide into a dictatorial regimes.”
“Absolutely, because if you study it, then it makes no sense why people keep falling for that,” she says, “The rhetoric is almostsimplistic: blaming the other guy and kicking up a lot of dust, butthat’s usually where it begins and ends. The distinction works on another level: blaming the other is short term and primal, but no populist that I know of has any long term solutions for societies’ problems besides despotism.”
“It sounds kind of dystopian….”
“It is and it does,” she says, “But what would be more dystopian is to just sit around and lament: the word needs to get out. People need understand how these systems work in order to recognize them.”
“And to stand up to them.”
“Not everyone is up to it,” Michelle says, “But if enough people are of the same mind.”
“Then things will change,” Mr. Ed says, finishing her thought.
Michelle sits back and thinks things over.
“There’s one thing though: it’s all in the nuance,” Michelle says, “Let me explain: studying cultures of the present and the past helps us understand our current times and predicaments. To be able to pick up on nuances in our times, you need to have an intricate and profound understanding of the subtleties of cultures in the present and the past.”
“Then if I understand it correctly: it’s more about acquiring a skill set that can be used in what? Politics?”
“Politics is one,” Michelle says, “Another would be academics, or writingfiction.”
Mr. Ed thinks it over.
“What would be your game out of those three?”
“I don’t know,” Michelle says, “I sure don’t want to spend my professional life in schools, so the academics is probably out. Which leaves politics and fiction.”
“Talking about two sides of different coins….”
“Exactly,” Michelle says, “I would like the raw games in politics. I wouldn’t mind being in the spotlights and taking on a good fight here and there. At the same time I wouldn’t mind the quiet and predictable life that comes with writing.”
“What does your gut tell you?”
“Politics can be more ideological,” Michelle says, “But so can writing.”
“If you talk about reach there isn’t much of a difference,” Mr. Ed says, “Politics can influence a lot of people, but so can good fiction.”
“The only real distinction is that politicians are quickly forgotten, but books that have stood the test of time…. They stick around a little longer.”
“You think you would be up for the games in politics.”
Michelle looks intensely at Mr. Ed and she leans forward.
“Politics is all about reading the other guy: what is he up to?” Michelle says, and then she turns her full attention on Mr. Ed, “What is your game, mister?”
Mr. Ed didn’t expect that one.
“That’s a good one,” Mr. Ed says.
“And I’m on to something,” Michelle says in a whisper, “If I were to put myself in the shoes of a politician and I would be in your office: that’s what I would think.”
“Why?”
“Just a hunch,” Michelle says, “And then there’s your profession: you’re assisting people uncover there problems. I would say that makes you very adapt at keeping something hidden.”
“You’regood, that’s good,” Mr. Ed says, laughing, “You proved your point, lady.”
Michelle thinks: I wasn’t joking.
Mr. Ed thinks: I let my guard down, the bitch probed me.
“We aren’t so different, you and I,” Mr. Ed says, angling for a response, “Wouldn’t you say?”
“Interesting,” she says: this fucker has something up his sleeve: I know it!….“You may just have proved my point.”
Mr. Ed is starting to feel agitated: if this was a business meeting it would be his cue to get his assistants to hold the guy down. Mr. Ed would then get in the guys face:“Repeat that again.”Usually that was enough to let the average guy wise up. It had happened only a few times that Mr. Ed had needed to take it even a step further.
Talk, intimidation, violence. That was the strategy.
2
Michelle was no guy and this was no business meeting. This was all for Mr. Ed to make amends. What if Lela send this lady to torment him?
“Maybe we should start over,” Mr. Ed says.
“Talk about my childhood?” Michelle says, “My deepest fear?”
“Let’s start with the childhood,” Mr. Ed says, “Start with your first memory.”
“I can do that.”
“When you’re ready….”
“We’re in the park,” Michelle says, “We’re playing a game and everyone is laughing.”
“What kind of game?”
“With one of those large plastic balls that kids play with in pools,” she says, “I’m playing throw and catch with my dad.”
“Good times,” Mr. Ed states.
“Well, not really,” Michelle sighs, and for a minute she dropsher guard, “My dad wasn’t around much and at some point he just left. He would come by like once a year until I was maybe 10/11. That last time I remember that my parents had a heated discussion in the kitchen and that was the last time he said ‘so long, pumpkin’.”
“You never tried to find him?”
“When I was like 15/16,” she says, realizing that she’s about to reveal something that had the potential of hurting her, but at the same time, she needed to get it off her chest, “The number that my mother had was disconnected. Then I called my grandparents and told them that I wanted the number of my father. They reluctantly gave it to me and when I called I understood why: he had a new wife (she answered the phone) and there were little kids playing in the back. Judging by the reluctancy of my grandparents I figured that he hadn’t told his new wife about me, so I just asked for Al. We talked, but it was coolly and he might not have had the liberty to talk freely at that time. I told him to contact me any time and that we still had the same number. It never happened and I never reached out either.”
“I can see that it still moves you,” Mr. Ed says, “You feel abandoned.”
Michelle looks up with sad eyes.
“The sad thing is that my mom never remarried,” she says, “Until this day she’s all alone.”
“Looking back, do you have any idea what they argued about that last time that you saw your dad?”
“I guess it was the typical grownup stuff,” she says, “Some settlement or alimony.”
“There’s not much of a silver lining here, huh?” Mr. Ed says, “Sometimes that’s just it: life is just cruel sometimes.”
“Like a group of hyenas or tigers jumping a prey and tearing its flesh to pieces,” she says, with a certain dark undercurrent that Mr. Ed sees in her eyes, “It makes me kind of lenient toward those who want pay it back ten fold.”
Mr. Ed saw the shift from being hurt to revengeful and it revealed a glimpse of what’s behind the mask: Michelle is a predator and the thought crosses his mind: it takes one to know one.
“How is an elephant or a zebra going to pull that off?” Mr. Ed asks, attempting to get her to reveal more.
“I just want to protect the ones that I love….”
“How far would you go?”
The fucker is prying.
“It’s all a hypothetical,” she says, and she pulls herself back together, “Like most things in my life, like my studies, for sake of the argument my whole history might be a hypothetical.”
“….”
“Like you said,” Michelle says, lowering her voice, “It takes one….”
Mr. Ed turns his head towards her.
“I didn’t say that.” I thought that.
“….”
“Next week same time?”
“It’s a date,” Michelle says, although she doesn’t get why she’s eager to accept on the spot.
*
Later on she realizes that it’s a two-sided coin: Mr. Ed had let her talk and vent, which was part of any healing process, but the other part of why she accepted was because she wanted to find out more about this guy. She just couldn’t resist: there was some darkness lurking.
*
That night Michelle had an unsettling dream: she ran into Mr. Ed butchering a defenseless guy that was held on against the wall by two other guys. Step backhe hissed and he beat the guy to a pulp.
Michelle was nailed to the ground. She wanted to yell and stop what was going on, but at the same time it thrilled her. When Mr. Ed was done, he walked in her direction and she didn’t feel fear, but a deep intense kind of excitement and then she woke up. The whole episode, or more precisely: the dream, it didn’t startle her, but instead it had turned her on more than anything else hadin a good long time.
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NEXT WEEK SOMEONE THAT WE KNOW WELL RETURNS: BRADLEY... COMMENT IF YOU WANT TO GIVE INPUT TO THE STORY. AVAILABLE FRIDAY FEBRUARY 8.....
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